Things That Need Saying
by MegaBadBunny
Summary: "She was, if she was being honest with herself, a little disappointed that he believed her." A little what-if exploring an alternate universe in which Rose lied to the Doctor on Bad Wolf Bay.
1. Part 1

"…and the baby," she finished.

To the untrained eye, the Doctor probably looked mildly invested in what she had to say. A quirk of the eyebrows, a half-smile, a crinkling at the corners of his eyes, all things designed to show polite interest. He was telling her, and the rest of the universe, that he was all right with this. He was always all right.

Rose knew better.

"You're not…?" he asked. His voice hitched almost imperceptibly. He let the question die on the salty sea air.

Rose thought for a moment, and that moment expanded into a dreadful eternity, compressed into a few tense milliseconds.

She could tell him the truth. Maybe she should. She considered it.

Maybe if she told him the truth, he wouldn't leave her here. He'd find a way to get to her, to bring her and her mum back, and Mickey and Pete if they wanted, and maybe, just maybe, there would be a way for him to do it that wouldn't cause the whole of reality to come crashing down around them. He would find a way.

Or no, she realized, looking at him—at his face wrecked with a desperation she'd never seen before, an underlying intensity that would frighten her if she wasn't already so bloody miserable herself—no, he might not find a way to make everything work. He might not consider the big picture this time. He talked a big talk, but Rose knew that even he had his limits. He could only sacrifice so much.

He'd already lost one family. Could he lose another?

Rose felt that she owed him the truth, but if he knew everything, he might pull her through the last few cracks anyway, the rest of reality be damned and burned. Then she remembered that he sent her away, purposefully and deceitfully threw her into a whole other universe, to deal with this burden all on her own.

She didn't owe him anything.

"No," she lied.

She was, if she was being honest with herself, a little disappointed that he believed her.

* * *

><p>"<em>Forever."<em>

_That was when it happened, the first time._

_The lead-up wasn't a particularly exciting event. Rose had always imagined, when she allowed herself to think of such things, that if their relationship had ever transcended to anything else, it would have been after a hair-raising adventure, a heart-pounding escapade, something writ in the fierce clashing of lips and limbs and skin after they narrowly escaped death. But instead, it happened in one of the small and quiet moments in-between._

_The trip to Ralcyon IV had been surprisingly calm. The Doctor had promised Rose a trip to a lovely sightseeing area, and, upon landing, was visibly disappointed when there was no uprising to join, no villain to thwart, no Big Dangerous Thing to stop. _

"_I'm starting to think you look for that stuff on purpose," Rose teased upon seeing the pouty look on his face._

"_What? Me? Never," the Doctor protested, his voice just a little too innocent and his eyes just a little too big. He shoved his hands in his trouser pockets and rocked back on his heels, surveying the landscape around them._

"_All the same," he said, "You're not going to get bored of this, are you?"_

_Rose looked all about them. Ralcyon IV was, in its current state, unsettled and unsullied by any other sentient creature. There was nothing green or lush or verdant on this world, or anything shining or exciting or new. The landscape bore nothing but harsh, cragged stone; Rose and the Doctor's only company was the occasional lonely bird-creature that flew by on leathery wings. But there was still something breathtakingly beautiful in the planet's empty desolation, in the sound of the forlorn wind whistling through the canyons, in the sharp rocky peaks that pierced upward into the heavens, where a glowing sunset bathed the sky in rich gold light. It made Rose think of the light of the TARDIS, of a song she had heard once, now half-forgotten._

"_Are you joking?" Rose asked, watching the sun set over the jagged horizon. "I'll never get tired of this."_

"_You seem very certain," the Doctor chuckled, looking down at his plimsoll-clad feet. "I suppose I'll have to take your word for it."_

"_I already told you I love it," Rose said firmly. "Traveling. With you."_

_The Doctor shifted in his shoes. "So," he said. He stopped. He fidgeted. He watched the sunset for a few moments longer._

"_How long are you going to stay with me?" he asked eventually, his eyes still trained forward._

_After a moment, he chanced a look over at Rose. She smiled._


	2. Part 2

Rose did not enjoy pregnancy.

She did not appreciate the swollen ankles, the sore back, the gigantic watermelon of a stomach that stretched out in front of her. She also found no pleasure in the bouts of intense hunger or the late-night refrigerator-emptying-binges or the ensuing tendency to retch it all back up the next morning. She did not like the mood swings, she hated the constant trips to the loo, and overall, she was not thrilled that her body had been hijacked to cater to the whims of this demanding and utterly ridiculous little being. But she couldn't complain, especially not to her mother, especially not after what happened.

"Oh, just wait til you feel him kick for the first time," her mother had cooed. "That's it. You'll fall in love."

Rose did feel him kick, in more ways than her mother expected. At eight or so months, just days before delivery, she was knocked flat on her feet by a flashing intrusion into her mind, a sudden hazy burst of warmth and something translucent and pink, the baby making his non-human parentage well and loudly known. Rose could not say that this had earned the baby any love, as she ended up with quite the nasty migraine afterward.

"You'll love being a mum," her mother had assured her. "It will come to you natural."

Neither of those things was particularly true. The childbirth itself was natural—not by choice, but because a flock of Kreetian lizard-birds attacked the Torchwood facility on the day her water broke, robbing Rose of her highly-trained home-birth team and their advanced medical equipment, but luckily, Mickey was there in a pinch to hold tightly onto her hand while she screamed—but Rose was not particularly skilled at diapering, or breastfeeding, or comforting. The baby's cry was shrill in her ears and it was all she could do to keep from crying herself.

Post-partum depression, the doctors and nurses called it, but Rose felt that didn't quite do it justice. It neglected the pre-partum depression and the during-partum depression and what promised to be some exciting after-post-partum depression.

"Look at him," her mother said one day after Rose returned from work. "He looks more like him every day. It's like you've got a little piece of the Doctor with you, always."

Rose looked Tony over. He did sort of look like the Doctor, in the way that infants often look like their fathers. Tousled brown hair, dark eyes, skin that promised to freckle in the sun.

She buried herself deeper in work after that.

At work, she could achieve some level of calm. She could type at a keyboard or work on an interspacial regulator or negotiate with aliens or laugh with Mickey and Jake and the others and sometimes, if she was lucky, she'd forget for a moment about the life she'd had before, where she had flown through space and touched the stars and seen the end of the world and felt all of time streaming through her mind.

At home, she oscillated between a sort of vague indifference toward her child, and sheer terror that something horrible would happen to him. When he tripped and bashed his head against the corner of a coffee table, determined to walk at five months old, Rose calmly and silently cleaned his wound, while he sniffled and whimpered, his round eyes shining with tears, his chubby little baby fingers twisting in the hem of her shirt. Rose had no comforting words for him, but she keenly felt his pain and fear every time her hands so much as brushed against his face. After she finished, she handed him off to her mother for soft whispers and cuddles.

Then she took the coffee table out back and chopped it up with an ax. Then she set it on fire.

It was an anxiety disorder, the doctors told her. They called it the unnamed sixth stage of loss and grief. They patiently explained that, after the loss of a close loved one, many survivors experience staggering anxiety, punctuated by periods of utter apathy. It was normal, they assured her. It would likely pass in time. But in the interim, they wrote her a prescription for something that would help level her out, for some expensive medication ending in –pax or –thal or –ium.

She took it, for a while. And it helped. She felt normal, first for a few weeks, then a few months, then a couple of years. Rose went to work and spent time with her family and played with her child, her son unknowingly masquerading as a brother.

But one day, Rose threw her prescription away. Not because she had anything against pharmaceuticals in particular, but because it dulled her somewhat, and the stars overhead were starting to blink out, one by one.

She couldn't afford to feel better. She had a universe to save.

(She would never that she just didn't think she deserved to feel better.)

"I know you love him," her mother told her one day as the two of them watched Tony, who, in turn, watched television. "Even if you don't always feel like it. Even if you don't always say it. Some things don't need saying."

But some things, Rose knew, did need saying.

* * *

><p><em>She didn't bring it up for a long time for fear that it would chase him away, but he knew. He had to know. He wasn't nearly as stupid as that.<em>

_She almost told him on Ralcyon IV, the moment after they walked back into the TARDIS. The Doctor took off his coat and tossed it over the ramparts, and then he removed his jacket as well, an indication that he was planning to work under the console for a bit. He loosened his necktie and rolled his sleeves up to the elbow as he darted toward the console, jabbering all the while._

"—_sounded like the dimensional capacitor needed a tune-up, but that'll be done in a jiffy, then we can head off wherever we like! We could go to the Grand and Pristine Palaces of the Phrystian Vizier," he said, sliding beneath the console with the sonic in hand and ready to go. "It's neither particularly grand nor pristine, you understand, fell into disrepair about, ooh, five centuries ago (local time), but there's almost always some promising hint of trouble about to start there—"_

_Rose watched his feet as he tinkered under the console, the sonic whirring and whining in his hand. His left foot jiggled nervously while he worked. She removed her own coat and tossed it next to his before slowly ascending the ramp to join him._

"—_or there's this lovely planet called 'Midnight', lovely little planet, got a waterfall made of sapphires, bring your mum home something nice—" the Doctor blathered, stopping long enough to flash Rose a quick grin before he jumped up and around to the opposite side of the console, typing something into an old keyboard he'd recently installed there. Rose watched his long fingers dance over the yellowed keys as she approached him._

"—_or Barcelona. Barcelona! I never did take you there," he said, running a hand through his hair, tousling it even further. Rose tried not to be distracted by the nearly obscene amount of bare skin displayed by his naked forearms._

"_Got a bit sidetracked by the regeneration, I'm afraid. Sorry about that. Should we do that? Barcelona. The city or the planet, I'm not particularly picky. Which do you prefer?" the Doctor continued._

_Rose didn't answer for a moment. He was always bouncy, and cheerful, and a bit mad, but as soon as she'd said "forever", he'd become downright manic. And she had just figured out why: This broad grin and this specific instance of nonstop gob were because of her. Because of what he'd asked, and what she'd said, and because of how happy it had made him. Now he stared at her, his mouth hanging open in a smile, his tongue peeking out between his teeth, his eyes twinkling and his hair absolutely mussed._

_She thought, maybe, she would tell him then. The thing that didn't need saying, but was bursting to escape her lips anyway. She opened her mouth to say it._

"_Rose?" the Doctor asked, one eyebrow arched in amusement._

"_Hrm?" she asked absently, tearing her gaze away from his mouth to look him in the eye._

"_You're staring," the Doctor said, and she realized she was._

"_Am I?" she asked, playing stupid._

"_Yes," the Doctor said, his one eyebrow now arching so high in its customary manner that it might disappear off his forehead altogether. "I'm fairly certain, not only because I'm rather a genius but because the signs are somewhat universal, that what you are doing, is, in fact, staring—"_

_The pounding and rushing of her pulse in her ears drowned out the next few words as Rose stood on her tiptoes and kissed him._

_As far as kisses went, it wasn't her best. She'd caught him with his mouth half-open and he didn't seem quick to change that, though she swore she felt him press back just for a moment. But really he didn't respond much at all, save for backing into the console so hard that it shook with the force of his impact. He broke the kiss with a gasp and stared back at Rose with wide eyes._

"_What—?" he spluttered, holding his hands up in a helpless gesture._

_Rose's heart sank. Oh, no. No, no, no._

_She stepped back, horrified. How could she have been so stupid? Her heart plummeted, past her churning stomach, past her toes, past the grating, out of the TARDIS and off the planet altogether._

"_Sorry," Rose said, blood rushing in her ears again, this time spreading warmth through her cheeks. She stepped back again. "Sorry," she repeated. "Sorry, what were you saying?"_

"_Barcelona," the Doctor said, steadying himself with his hands, his eyes round and huge. He gripped the edge of the console so tightly that his knuckles were bright white, bones straining to jump out of his skin._

"_Yeah," Rose nodded, blinking rapidly. She swallowed. She nodded again. "Yeah, Barcelona. That sounds good. Let's do that. Yeah."_

"_Right," the Doctor said. _

"_Right," Rose agreed. "I'm just gonna…" she said, backing away. She gestured in the general vicinity of her room. _

"_Right," the Doctor said again, scratching the back of his neck, his face unreadable._

"_Let me know when we get there, yeah?" Rose said in response. She took a few steps toward her room._

"_Rose," the Doctor called quietly._

_Rose stopped. She bit her lip. She turned. _

_The Doctor avoided looking her in the eye. "This…isn't going to be a problem, is it?"_

_Rose fervently wished a black hole would spring up and swallow her. "We don't have to talk about it. Really. I already know what you're going to say."_

_The Doctor raised a questioning eyebrow. "You do?" he asked. It was a genuine query, not a trace of sarcasm or amusement behind it._

"_Yeah," Rose sighed, leaning against the railing opposite him. "I mean, I know what you would say if we ever really talked about this sort of thing."_

"_Ah," he said, and Rose thought that was the end of it._

_The Doctor crossed his arms over his chest and fell silent. He shot a pointed look Rose's way, as if he was waiting for her to continue._

_The temptation to flee still tugged at Rose's mind, told her to run back to her room and bury her face in her pillow until the morning. But she'd gotten this far. She might as well get it all out, Rose thought, before the opportunity passed, before the Doctor decided that no, he didn't want to talk about this after all. Before the discussion was swallowed up by the same fog that had claimed every other lingering look, too-tight hug, and almost-confession._

"_You'd say that it would be irresponsible, or it would be stupid to get into anything since it would complicate things, or you'd tell me that you care for me, just not like that," Rose said, staring down at her hands as her fingers tapped a nervous rhythm against her thigh._

_The Doctor nodded. "Yeah," he said. "Except you're wrong about that last bit, though."_

_Rose stopped tapping. She looked up, confused._

_The Doctor pushed away from the console and stepped around to the other side, his hands in his pockets as he surveyed—or pretended to survey, one could never tell—the various screens and monitors in front of him. Rose waited with baited breath for him to continue._

"_We've been traveling together for a while now," the Doctor said finally, pulling levers and flipping switches and pressing buttons. "And you're a very clever young woman, Rose. Much cleverer than you give yourself credit for. So I'm just a little surprised you haven't figured it out yet."_

"_Figured what out?" Rose asked._

_The Doctor entered a command into the console. His gaze carefully avoided hers. "I may not make a habit of fraternizing with my companions," he said, "But that doesn't mean that I never want to."_

"_Uh-huh," Rose said somewhat stupidly, her heart rate picking up again as the insufferable organ started doing what felt like backflips in her chest._

"_But it's complicated. Very complicated. Not just with the inter-species what-have-you, but there's the time-and-spatial-dynamics to consider, and the life span disparity, and the constant chance—no, make that guarantee—of danger," the Doctor said very quickly, leaning over the console, his words cramming themselves together in the effort to rush out of his mouth before he could clamp down on them. "Nevermind that I'm the last of my race, and try as I might, some things are hard to shake, like their very specific rules on any kind of intimate involvement with, to put it bluntly, less-evolved species, and then there's the fact that genocidal monsters don't generally deserve happiness, much less someone to share it with."_

"_Wait, hang on," Rose tried to interject, but the Doctor ignored her._

"_And then there are the unseen variables," he said, staring at nothing, rubbing a hand along his jaw, "Such as the destruction of potential timelines and the creation of new ones, and you've already been so far displaced, I've already done so much damage to your personal timeline as it is—"_

"_You're not a monster," Rose said loudly._

"_Aren't I?" he asked, looking up at her._

"_No," she insisted, her voice firm._

_The Doctor stared at Rose in disbelief. "Once again, you seem very certain," he told her._

"_I am," Rose replied stubbornly. "Cos the way I see it, you were a soldier in a war. An impossible war. It isn't like you had any good choices to make. So you did bad things to prevent worse things from happening. Every soldier does that. You don't blame the soldier. You blame the war."_

_He let out a short, sharp laugh. "You make it sound so simple," he said, shaking his head. "The things I've done…they can't be just written away like that. I can't be forgiven, Rose."_

_Rose shrugged. "I forgive you," she said._

_The Doctor blinked at her. His mouth hung open, as if he might protest, but he didn't. _

_It wasn't what Rose had wanted to say, but she'd rendered him speechless nonetheless. She watched him, her fingers now tapping expectantly._

_He cleared his throat. "That's not—"_

"_And I meant it when I said 'forever'," Rose continued, taking a step closer to him._

_He studied her face for a moment, his own face flooded with anger and confusion and desperation and something that looked, just maybe, just perhaps the smallest bit, like longing and want._

_Feeling bold again, Rose bridged the distance between them and kissed him on the cheek, gently, feather-light, her lips just brushing the corner of his mouth. She pulled back to gauge his response, but she barely had a moment to think before he reached out, cupping her face in his hand, and returned the kiss, pressing his lips firmly against hers._

_Rose felt herself melt against him. She wrapped both of her arms around him, her fingers curling into the back of his shirt. His hands drifted down to her waist and clasped her close. Rose opened her mouth, deepening the kiss, and he hungrily followed suit. Warmth spread all through Rose, rushing through her veins and leaving her lightheaded._

_It was almost too much, all at once. This time it was Rose who broke the kiss, in an effort to remember how to breathe. She panted against his chest, her whole body quivering, her nerves singing and burning all at once._

"_I meant it too," he admitted to her quietly._

_It had been a while since a bloke had made Rose feel quite like this, and even that was with all the power of the Vortex flowing in her mind. She felt like she might pass out._

_She kissed him again anyway._


	3. Part 3

"You're not going to stay there forever, are you?" Mickey asked.

There was that damn word again. _Forever_.

Rose rolled her eyes. "No such thing," she said aloud, pulling her hair out of her eyes and pinning it back.

"I'm serious," Mickey insisted. He toyed with the yellow button that hung around his neck. "You can't just go swanning off with the Doctor again. You've got responsibilities—"

"I know," Rose cut him off, her voice sharp. "I'm not just gonna leave Tony here, all right? At least, not without telling the Doctor—"

She waved a hand while she searched for the right words. "—you know. Everything."

Mickey crossed his arms. "Okay, I was talking about your responsibilities at Torchwood. Is there something else you want to talk about?"

Rose hesitated, and cursed herself for her loose tongue. "No," she replied, her voice clipped. She punched the keys on the Dimension Cannon a little harder than was strictly necessary. "There's not." The device built up a low whirr as it powered up.

"He'll understand," Mickey said. He checked and double-checked the gauges on the Cannon. "You know that, right? He'll forgive you."

Rose had a fleeting memory of Christmas, and a swordfight, and no second chances.

"It's not just about him," she said instead of voicing her fears aloud. She tucked them back into the dark corners of her mind, where they belonged. "I mean, it's not just about me and him. Or me and him and Tony, even. It's about the stars going out, and the Doctor is probably the only one who can stop it. Me getting to see the Doctor again is just a happy side effect."

Mickey snorted. "You're so full of shit," he said, shaking his head. Rose didn't argue.

The Cannon issued a loud beeping sound as it finished its warm-up. "I'm thinking of going," Mickey said suddenly. "Going back, I mean. If this works. Just so you know."

Rose nodded. She was a little surprised at his pronouncement, but only a little. "If I'm lucky, maybe I'll see you around," she said with a small smile.

"If you're lucky," Mickey said with a wide grin.

He initiated the final sequence. "You ready?" he asked Rose.

Rose took a deep breath. She thought for a second time about second chances. She nodded again.

"Yeah," she told him. "Yeah, I'm ready."

* * *

><p><em>The Doctor sat down on the jumpseat, sat down hard judging by the unearthly rattle that arose in protest, but he didn't seem to mind, or even notice. His eyes were on Rose as he pulled her into his lap—she seemed to have lost her trousers somehow, she wasn't sure when that happened, wasn't sure she cared, though the air was shockingly cool on her naked legs—and he pulled her snug against him, settling her thighs around his waist. She immediately went to work on his shirt buttons, her fingers moving deftly over his chest as she planted kisses along his neck. He let out a shudder when her lips graced a particularly sensitive patch of skin behind his ear.<em>

_His hands slipped upward, under her shirt, until flesh met flesh, his fingers expanding over her flanks. He pulled her even closer to him, and kissed her once again, a kiss that was anything but chaste while his hands wandered, leaving warm and ticklish trails in their wake. Rose was only a little surprised at the sensation of his tongue in her mouth, gently probing against hers, exploring, sensing, tasting. Salty and musky and sweet. He wanted to taste everything else; she supposed she was no exception. He moved one hand up to her face and tenderly ran his thumb along the bottom of her sensitized and swollen lower lip, sending tremors rippling down her spine._

_This was by no means Rose's first sexual encounter, but it certainly was her headiest. She almost felt intoxicated. She knew it was just hormones or pheromones or chemicals all battling for dominance in her brain, heightening her sensitivity and filling her with desire…or it was very possibly something else as well, someone else, the Doctor losing control of his telepathy and drowning them both in sensation and euphoria and sheer need. He pulled back, his eyes dark and wild and an unspoken apology hovering on his lips when he realized what was happening, how far he'd lost himself._

_Rose smiled and kissed his apology away._

_She ran her fingers through his hair, grazing her fingernails along his scalp, and he peppered her neck with warm, damp kisses. Instinctively, her hips arched against him. He let out a low hum, his fingers skimming the outside of her smooth legs and slipping under the hem of her knickers and digging into her soft hips hard enough to bruise. She didn't mind._

_She pressed herself against him once more, reveling in the heat and the friction and the deliciousness of it all, relishing the feel of his two hearts hammering desperately against her one, and she slid a hand between them, murmuring in his ear the things she would very much like to do with him right at that moment._

_Her pants met the same mysterious fate as her trousers shortly after that._

"_That," the Doctor announced, some time and many discarded items of clothing later, "Was probably a mistake."_

"_Oh?" Rose replied sleepily, far too tired to take him very seriously at that point. She snuggled up against him under the duvet and planted a kiss on his jaw. "I suppose that means you won't want to do it again, then," she sighed._

"_I didn't say that. In fact, I would very much like to do it again. Frequently, and at regular intervals."_

_Rose looked up at him and flashed a grin, and he rewarded her with a warm smile of his own. She thought, again, about telling him how she felt, while he laid in her bed with his hair gloriously rumpled and his glasses on and a battered copy of Tales of Orpheus in his hand because even if she was going to sleep, he certainly wasn't, he rarely did, but that didn't mean he didn't want to share a bed with her anyway._

"_Thought it was a mistake," she teased instead._

"_Oh, it was. But I have a bad habit of making the same mistake over and over, you see," he responded, looping one arm around her and idly stroking her shoulder as his eyes scanned over the book. "I'm sort of hopeless that way."_

"_You are," Rose agreed, and they made many more mistakes over the next few weeks._

_She could always tell him later._


	4. Part 4

Later, she told him she loved him, on a cold beach in Norway.

And she had hoped that, perhaps, one day, she might hear it from him, but the Doctor that stood in front of her now, on that same beach years later, was older, and tired, and bitter somehow, and very, very unhappy. And he was going to leave her all over again.

"Does it need saying?" he asked.

Rose just stood and stared. It was obvious, patently and painfully obvious, not just to Rose but to everyone else, even down to the bloody damn Daleks, that he returned her feelings. This was not a one-sided affair. But for whatever stupid, hurtful reason, he was determined to keep silent.

He couldn't just say three simple words before he never saw her again.

How could she tell him about Tony now? At this point, any comment about their child would just seem spiteful, or worse, it would look like an attempt to manipulate him, to leverage him into taking her and Tony along, and she did not want to go back to the other universe with him just because he felt some kind of cold obligation toward their child. That wouldn't be fair to her or Tony, and Tony had already had enough parental trouble for one lifetime.

That was the moment that Rose felt, with alarming clarity and grueling detail, the remainder of her patience draining out of her.

"And you, Doctor?" she turned and asked the new Doctor, who looked and sounded and seemed so much like the old one. "What was the end of that sentence?"

He leaned over to tell her before she could even finish asking.

* * *

><p>Over the next few weeks, Rose learned quite a lot about this new Doctor.<p>

The new Doctor liked peanut butter, swimming pools, grape lollies, and blue suits. He loved cats this time around, cats of all shapes and sizes and colors and levels of fluffiness, and really, the uglier and more smoosh-faced they were, the better. He enjoyed reading as much as ever, his voracious appetite expanding to include everything—literally every book—he could get his hands on, from this universe's Shakespeare to science and maths textbooks to bad romance novels to biographies to Neil Gaiman and Diana Wynne-Jones and everything in between. He enthusiastically partook in trips to the shops and the market, and gleefully turned down every job Torchwood and UNIT tried to offer, despite the fact that he was there every other week anyway to solve the new paranormal or extraterrestrial problem of the day. And he had no compunction whatsoever in making his feelings for Rose Tyler well and truly known.

"Yes, we're together," he announced to the waiter at some upscale restaurant Pete had recommended. "And I mean together-together," he clarified. "In a relationship sense," he stated. "A romantic relationship, I should say," he continued. "An intimate romantic relationship," he finished.

The waiter just smiled nervously and asked if they preferred a table or a booth.

The new Doctor also appreciated a good experiment, which he demonstrated in his attempts to figure out, the hard way, how well this new body would metabolize alcohol.

The answer? Not very well at all.

"Oh, I love you, Rose Tyler," he slurred as the two of them stumbled down the street, hand-in-hand, in search of a taxi. "Very much. Oodles and heaps and mounds. Did I tell you that?"

"You did," Rose said with a lazy smile. She wasn't half-tipsy herself.

"And you, you love me too, don't you?" he asked, swinging their clasped hands between them.

"I do," she nodded.

Without warning, he stepped into an alleyway and pulled her with him, so hard that she almost lost her balance, teetering on her pumps.

"Say it, please," he said softly, holding her close by the elbows. His eyes were dark and his breath warm and sweet and she was all right with that.

"I love you," she told him with a smile.

He grinned and kissed her, pushed her up against the brick wall, his hands sliding up her arms to frame her face. She pressed her hands into his chest and felt his single human heart beat against her fingertips. She pulled herself upward, to bring herself into contact with as much of him as she possibly could. He let out a happy hum against her lips.

That was another thing this new Doctor liked: snogging, and lots of it, and lots of the stuff that followed after.

He also seemed to enjoy spending time with Tony, and Rose couldn't decide if that made things less complicated, or far, far more.

"Wonder Woman," Tony replied one day when the Doctor asked him who his favorite superhero was.

"Good choice," the Doctor told him solemnly, adding the final blue plastic piece to his Lego contraption that, for all Rose knew, was able to pick up radio signals from the third moon of Jupiter.

"She makes me think of Rose," Tony said.

The Doctor considered for a moment. "I can see that." He shot Rose a grin.

Rose smiled back nervously from her perch in her kitchen, watching as the Doctor and Tony put together intricate designs from the pastel-rainbow mound of Lego blocks surrounding them—standard Lego blocks, in this universe, came in a range of Easter-soft blues, yellows, greens, and pinks.

Different universe, different Legos, different Doctor.

Rose had hoped, when Tony and the Doctor were introduced, that the Doctor would have sensed their connection somehow, that he would still have that same kind of magical radar that detected the presence of another half-Time Lord. But that sort of capability, along with other skills like his time sense, seemed to have diminished greatly in this new body. And now it had been over a month since he and Tony had first met and Rose still hadn't figured out how to say anything.

"You've got to say something," Jackie whispered, scraping a batch of warm and gooey biscuits off the biscuit sheet. She didn't much like to cook now that she no longer had to (a small fleet of well-paid house assistants took care of all such things for her), but her dislike of cooking did not extend to her desire to bake, so Rose's cottage was often full of biscuits and pastries and cakes and other things that made Tony's little tummy just the tiniest bit tubby.

"It's only going to get more difficult the longer you wait," Jackie prodded when Rose did not respond.

"Yeah, but what exactly am I supposed to say?" Rose whispered back. "I can't just go, 'It's nice to see you again, and oh by the way, we have a kid you didn't know about because I was afraid to tell you since I thought you might go mad and end the universe,' can I?"

Jackie shrugged against the flouncy straps of her apron. "Why the hell not?" she demanded.

Rose heaved a sigh and buried her face in her hands, tangled her fingers in her hair. "And I haven't exactly been the best mum," she admitted to the top of the table.

Jackie softened at that. "Tony has a good family," she said. "He's not lacking for love, you know."

"Yeah, but—"

"Better a nontraditional family than none at all," Jackie cut her off. "He's got a mum and dad with me and Pete, and he's got a big sister that loves him. That's a lot better than a lot of kids get. And I don't know what else we would have done, cos the fact is, you weren't equipped to be a mum. Not at all. Took me a while to figure that out, but you made the best decision for everyone."

Rose sighed again. "I just don't…"

"Excuse me, sorry to interrupt," the Doctor said, popping his head around the corner, "But did you know that the kitchen's on fire?"

Rose and Jackie turned to see that the oven was, indeed, smoking at the edges.

"Oh, drat!" Jackie snapped, leaping forth with an oven mitt on hand. She opened the oven door and a flood of grey-black smoke vomited out. "Drat, drat, drat!" she repeated, fanning the smoke away. The smoke alarm started screaming overhead. "Drat!" Jackie spat out one last time.

The Doctor reached up and switched off the alarm in one swift stroke. "I thought you stayed in the kitchen to keep an eye on the biscuits," he said to Rose.

Rose laughed, and it was a pale, weak sound. "Yeah," she said.

The Doctor frowned. "You all right?" he asked.

Rose forced a cheerful expression onto her face, slapping on a large smile that hopefully belied the slump of her shoulders. "Peachy," she said.

"Oh, peachy! Lovely," the Doctor replied. "Peaches are nice, aren't they? Are they? I don't know. We should put that on the list." The list, of course, being one of things he wanted to try in this new half-human body.

"Can I have a biscuit, Mr. Doctor?" Tony called from the living-room.

"Maybe," the Doctor called back over his shoulder, "If your mum hasn't gone and burned them all."

"Nice," Jackie pouted, slapping him on the arm. She pointed to the biscuits cooling on the rack. "There are some perfectly fine biscuits in the batch, I'll have you know!"

The Doctor grabbed a handful of the chocolate chip confections. "I think I'll be the judge of 'perfectly fine', thanks," he said.

Jackie scowled. "Shouldn't let you have any, that'd serve you right," she said with a grumble, scraping the burnt stuff off her blackened biscuit sheet into the trash.

The Doctor just grinned and bounded back into the living room, handing one of his pilfered treats to Tony. "I brought you some contraband," he said before taking a bite. "You probably shouldn't tell your mum, though. She's on the warpath."

"She's not my mum," Tony said brightly around a mouthful of chocolate chip biscuit, his face somehow already sticky and covered with crumbs.

"No?" the Doctor asked, amused. He popped the rest of the treat into his mouth and licked the chocolate off his fingers. "Who is, then?"

"It's Rose."

Rose's breath halted in her chest.

Jackie stopped scrubbing the biscuit sheet for a just a second, her grip on her sponge faltering. She shot an incredulous look over at her daughter. Rose just sat on her stool with her mouth hanging open, wondering why the hell Tony would say such a thing, hoping it was just a joke, because she had certainly never told him the truth.

"Really?" the Doctor asked, more amused now than ever, and completely oblivious to the silent, panicked dialogue taking place in the kitchen behind him. He crouched down to Tony's height, careful to avoid the blight of stepping on an errant Lego. "So if Wonder Woman's your mum, who's your dad then, little man?" he asked, eyes twinkling as he played along. "Superman? The Flash? Batman?" He wrinkled his nose. "Tell me it's not Aquaman."

"No," Tony laughed, his chocolatey face scrunching up in delight. "He's not a superhero. He's a Time Lord."

A heavy and uncomfortable silence fell on the room.

Rose just bit her lip and closed her eyes, screwing them shut. A stray thought ambled through her mind, urging her to get up and say something, or do something, just something something something anything, but she was paralyzed, rooted to her chair, unable to do anything but watch the train derail in front of her in agonizing slow-motion.

The Doctor blinked a few times, as if he hadn't quite heard right. "What?" he asked with a smile. He laughed and bopped Tony on the nose. "Just how many stories have you heard about me? Am I that impressive?"

"Rose told me one day," Tony said quietly, in the way that young children's quiet voices are often actually quite loud. "Only she didn't use her words. I'm not supposed to know."

The smile faded off the Doctor's face.

"What do you mean," he asked Tony, the words inching out of his mouth, "she didn't say it with her words?"

"We have to use our words," Tony explained, his face serious as he recited one of the first and most constant things he'd ever learned. "We have to use our words when we talk, either with our mouths," he pointed to his own mouth, "or our hands," and here he wriggled his hands, "because not everybody can do it with their brains like I can," and he pressed his chubby index fingers against his temples, "and I might see or hear things I shouldn't. So we have to use our words."

He smiled, proud of himself for remembering the number one rule.

"You're telepathic," the Doctor realized aloud. His voice had gone flat.

Tony nodded. "I'm telepathetic. That's what the Torchwood doctor said," he confirmed.

The Doctor's eyes lost their focus, staring at nothing while all the pieces came crashing against each other in his head, fitting together like the Legos assembled on the floor. Rose could practically hear the whirlwind from where she sat. The Doctor stood up. His chest heaved with the labor of breathing heavily and trying to keep it quiet and contained.

This new Doctor liked a lot of things, Rose had learned. But one thing that he did not like, much like each of the Doctors before, was having things kept from him.

Rose tried to speak to him, but her lips and tongue refused to obey.

Wordlessly, the Doctor crossed the room in three long strides, opened the door, and left. The door slammed behind him.

Tony looked back to Jackie and Rose in the kitchen, and his big eyes were full of tears.

"I made him mad," he said, his lower lip quivering.

"Oh, lovey," Jackie said, her own voice thick with emotion. She rushed into the living room and scooped him up with a hug. She made soothing sounds while he whimpered into her shoulder.

"You didn't do anything wrong, little man," Jackie cooed, smoothing Tony's hair down with her hand. "You didn't do anything wrong."

Only then did Rose snap out of her reverie, the sounds and colors and smells of the room suddenly rushing back in painful Technicolor sharpness.

She didn't have a plan, didn't know what she could possibly say, but she slid out of her chair and ran after the Doctor.


	5. Part 5

"Doctor!"

Somewhere in the fog that had decided to crop up in his brain, the Doctor registered that someone was calling for him, and that someone was Rose. He ignored her. He kept going, walking in long strides down the grass outside Pete and Jackie's manor and Rose's tiny cottage.

"Doctor, wait!"

He did not wait. He did not want to wait. He never used to have to wait. In the days before, the word had no meaning. There was no such thing. He could just hop in the TARDIS and skip all of the useless waiting, get right to what he wanted.

And now he was stalking away from Rose, running without actually running, and he was being told he had a child he'd never known about, and he was being told to _wait_.

"Doctor, please!" Rose's shorter legs couldn't quite keep up with his long; he heard her feet pattering two to three steps to each one of his. "Please!" she shouted. "I need to talk to you!"

"Really? I can't imagine why!" he said sharply, still walking, to where, he didn't know, but there was a field up ahead, and that seemed as good a place to go as any. "It isn't as if there's anything terribly big going on, no, it's not like you have an important announcement to make, or a declaration to declare, or some vital information to send my way, is there? It's not like the whole of the universe was just dropped on my head without any warning, or everything is spinning out of control, or my entire world just blew up in front of me!"

He spun around to face her. "So what on earth could you possibly want to talk about?" he spat.

Rose started to speak, but faltered. She shrugged. She made a feeble attempt at gesturing with her hands.

The Doctor pursed his lips. "Well, thanks for that," he said, in a tone that was tight and sarcastic and unpleasant even to his own ears and not only because it reminded him horribly of Donna. "That was ever so helpful, everything you said just now. Very enlightening. I'm glad we had this talk. Now, if you're done with your oh-so eloquent soliloquy, I have a bit more storming off to do."

"Look, I'm sorry, it's not like I've ever had a conversation like this before," Rose told him. "I don't exactly know what to say!"

"Then I'll make it easy for you," the Doctor said.

He pointed back to the cottage. He steadied himself. He willed his voice not to crack.

"That child in your home—Tony—"

He paused to take a deep breath. He tried to speak. Nothing came out. He tried again.

"Is he mine?" he asked.

Rose nodded, and in such a breathless manner that the Doctor wondered if it was the first time she'd said it aloud, she confessed.

"Yes. Tony is our son."

The Doctor waited for that sensation of being punched in the gut, that horrible feeling of the air rushing out of your lungs that often accompanies the state of shock, but he realized he'd already had it, he already knew the answer, he'd known it the instant Tony said "Time Lord". He just needed to hear it from Rose for the truth to really, truly sink in.

But now that he had the truth, he didn't quite know what to do with it.

"Stupid," he breathed. He shook his head. He ran his hands through his hair and pressed them against the sides of his head, which felt like it might drift away to escape everything bubbling up inside. "I'm so stupid," he said, mostly to himself. "I should have known right away. Why didn't I know?"

He dropped his hands and set his jaw, glaring at Rose. "You said he was Jackie's," he accused. "Jackie's and Pete's."

Rose nodded. "That's what we told everyone," she explained. "It was just easier that way."

She shuffled her feet in the mud; the Doctor looked down and realized she'd run out without her shoes, and her socks were slowly turning brown, soaking up the damp. Rose shivered in the cold breeze.

_Good_, he thought nastily.

"Things were weird enough when we first got here," Rose said, pushing a wayward tendril of hair behind her ear. "Mum and I showed up, and she was easy to explain, because there was the other Jackie, see. So Mum just said she was the same person, and no one really questioned it. But then there was me, the 'long-lost daughter' or whatever, and that caused a huge riff with the papers and the magazines and everything. They were all sure I was a scammer, just some con artist out to get Pete's money. Every single thing I did outside of the manor was monitored and photographed by people trying to 'catch' me or 'expose' me. And then when we'd been here a few weeks, it turned out that Mum and me were both..."

She swallowed. "You know. Pregnant. And that made things even more complicated."

The Doctor's eyebrows knit together in confusion. "Wait, if your mum really was pregnant, what happened?"

Rose looked up at him. "She was pregnant at 40 years old. What do you think happened?"

He thought for a moment. "Ah," he said, when he pieced together that Jackie must have miscarried. He wasn't sure how to respond to that. "I'm sorry," he said, and even though he was still angry, still very, very angry, he did mean it.

"Everything was awful those first few months," Rose said. "Mum lost the baby right after Bad Wolf Bay. She was devastated. She couldn't get out of bed for days. We both stayed shut in for weeks at a time. And I didn't want all the papers to know I was pregnant—that would have just made everything worse."

"Why?"

Rose hugged herself in the cold air. "I mean it when I say I was followed every time I left the manor. Every time. Everyone thought I was a liar. Even Pete's friends. Add a baby to the mix, and people start gossiping, and they start thinking you're only using the baby as a guilt trip or manipulation or whatever, and then they start digging for dirt. What happens when they look too deep and find out that all my papers are fake?"

"I suppose that's valid," the Doctor said grudgingly.

"Everyone already knew Mum was pregnant. Hell, she made an announcement as soon as she peed on a stick and it turned up a plus sign," Rose continued, and she ignored the look of distaste that passed over the Doctor's face at the mental image she'd conjured. "So when I started showing, I just stayed in the manor until Tony was born, and we told everybody that he was Mum's."

"Yes, but you didn't have to tell _me_ that," the Doctor said, anger flaring up again in his chest. "That first time on Bad Wolf Bay, you should have told me the truth!"

Rose laughed. "What, that I was having our kid, a kid that you'd probably never, ever get to see?"

"Yes!" the Doctor shouted, unable to believe that Rose was arguing with him over this. "Yes, you should have told me that!"

"Why? So I could have made you even more miserable?" Rose argued. "What good would that have done?"

The Doctor threw up his hands. "I would have known!" he said. "I would have known that we had a child! Isn't that enough?"

Rose didn't say anything to that.

The Doctor started pacing in the field, the long grass whipping and swishing against his suit trousers, his restless feet splattering loudly in the mud. "Look, I won't get angry that you let him stay with Jackie and Pete. I can't imagine that you were in any condition to raise a child, not if you were even half as useless as I was after Canary Wharf."

He clenched his fists. "I'm sorry about everything you've been through," he said through gritted teeth. "I am. I really, really am. I'm sure it's been rough. I'm sure it's been hell. But it's not okay that you kept this from me. Do you understand that? Do you? You know that, right?"

Rose's mouth twisted. "Yes," was the quiet response.

The Doctor panted a little as he watched her, and he paced still, unhappy that he was so quickly out of breath, cursing this new body's lack of a respiratory bypass. What a stupid design flaw. Rose watched him as well, a shadow of wretched resignation dark on her face.

"Don't you do that," the Doctor said angrily, wagging his finger at her. "Don't you stand there and be all quiet and sad. I don't like it. Why aren't you shouting? Or defending yourself? Or stomping off? Yell at me, for heaven's sake!"

"No," she said, tired.

"It is perfectly reasonable for me to be upset with you right now!"

"I know," Rose replied.

The Doctor halted. "No, no, no," he said, rapidly approaching her. "No, you don't know anything. You can't possibly know what it's like to have that kind of information kept from you!"

"Not sure how I could," Rose said, "Seeing as I gave birth to the baby, and all."

"Shut up," the Doctor snapped.

Hurt and anger flashed across Rose's face. The Doctor instantly regretted being so unpleasant. But he didn't feel compelled to apologize.

"I told you before, I told you that I was a father once," the Doctor said, his voice edged with bitterness. "I had a family. I lost them. I lost everyone. They're all gone, Rose. Every single one of them."

Memories rose to his mind, thoughts of Susan, and, for the first time in years, vivid images of his child and his wife; he pushed those images back down.

"I don't want to talk about it," the Doctor told Rose. "I don't want to think about it. But it's always back there. All the time. The loss. It never goes away."

"I know," Rose said again, her eyes cast to the ground, her voice so quiet he almost didn't hear her. "I know what that's like, a little bit."

He realized, with a pang, that she was referring to him. He shifted guiltily.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Look, I really am sorry. But it was grotesquely unfair of you to hide our child from me. Especially since the other me will never know," the Doctor told her, even as he realized it was true. The other Doctor would never know he was a father again.

"You can't just withhold information and make people's decisions for them!" the Doctor continued.

Rose raised an eyebrow at him. "You really want to go there?" she asked.

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Yes, I'm a bad, bad man, I know," he huffed. "Paid for my mistakes, didn't I? Sending you away that first time nearly killed me."

"I remember."

"You'll be the death of me again, I swear."

"Please don't say that," Rose mumbled.

The Doctor chewed the inside of his mouth. He watched Rose some more as she shivered and stuffed her hands in her pockets and her toes wriggled in her ruined socks. He tore his eyes away and started pacing again.

He wondered just how awful things had been here for her, for those first few months. He remembered his own misery all too well. Only he hadn't had a baby to deal with, a little fragile life that would depend on him for everything at a time when he barely managed to take care of himself. Even if he hadn't known it, he'd sent her away with a huge responsibility and burden, left her all on her own.

Not on her own, he reminded himself. She had family here. He didn't have anyone.

But that wasn't true either, exactly. He had Martha and Donna.

He could have tried harder to get to her, he argued with himself.

That probably would have destroyed the universe, he mused. It was impossible.

No, it wasn't impossible. She found a way.

She found a way to get back to him, and found a way for their child to have a happy home, even if she wasn't able to give it to him herself.

But still. She had lied to him.

He tried not to think of all the times he had lied to her.

The back-and-forth made his head hurt. This half-human brain was too small and too stupid to have this many conflicting thoughts bickering inside it.

"He's smart, isn't he?" the Doctor heard himself saying.

"Yeah," Rose said. "He's pretty smart."

They both stood in silence for a moment.

"Look, I should have told you sooner," Rose said. "I should have. I know that. But you weren't here to make all the hard choices with me. You tried to send me away. So I didn't really feel like I owed you anything, all right? And I think…"

She looked down at her feet. "I think I was just afraid."

The Doctor thought, then, of another young woman who couldn't admit that her brother was her son, and the fear that she must have felt when she finally admitted the truth in front of a platoon of strangers during World War II. He remembered a Rose who barely feared anything, who would have been loud and shout-y and stubborn instead of quiet and sad. He swallowed the lump that had lodged in his throat.

"Oh, can't imagine why," he said, his voice mild now that the urge to shout had dissipated. "The first human/Time Lord child ever to appear in this universe, no looms involved, dad gone missing, and you probably swelled up like a zeppelin, sounds like a picnic."

Rose rolled her eyes. "Shut up," she said, but without any malice.

"He does look a bit like me, doesn't he?"

"Yeah, I sort of thought that might be a giveaway."

"Yes, well, I'm only human now, my mental acuity isn't what it once was."

"Watch it, that's my species you're talking about. Your species now, too."

"I'm still cross with you, you know," the Doctor told her suddenly. "I'm sure you understand."

Rose nodded.

"And I hope you understand that I'm going to need some time. To think about this. To process everything," the Doctor said, because it was a reasonable request, in light of everything that had happened, and it sounded like it was probably a good idea, like a thing a regular human adult would say.

Rose nodded again, and this time there were tears in her eyes. "Yeah," she said, blinking in an attempt to hold the tears back. "Yeah, sure, I get it."

And the Doctor thought of being alone again, and of Rose being alone even with other people around her, and that was when what was left of his one pitiful human heart splintered and cracked.

"Well, if you do, then you're sillier than you look, because I lied," he blurted out.

"What?" Rose asked, confused.

"I don't need time. Time is stupid. It's not like you can really have it anyway. It's not a physical thing. It's just an abstract construct, really. Also, I love you," he rushed. "And at the risk of sounding like an utterly selfish cad, I don't want to be alone anymore, and I don't want you to be alone, and having a family again sounds rather nice, especially if you're in it, and Tony too, even if I do have to put up with your mum occasionally setting the kitchen on fire."

He paused for breath. "Did you hear the 'I love you' part?"

The Doctor staggered backward as Rose launched herself at him in an attack hug, wrapping her arms around his neck. She let out a strangled sound that was halfway between a sob and a laugh. He blinked and was surprised that his own eyes had a tear or two in them (they were very manly tears, he was certain), and he put his arms around her, rubbed up and down her back in what he hoped was a comforting gesture. He kissed the top of her head and ignored the blonde flyaway hairs that tickled his nose.

"I'm sorry I lied to you," Rose mumbled, her voice muffled against his chest by layers of suit and shirt.

"I know," he told her. "I…forgive you."

The words felt strange coming out of his mouth, and they must have sounded strange, because Rose shot him a watery, uncertain smile afterward. "That's very big of you," she said sarcastically, and with a great sniffle.

"It is," he agreed with a grin, though it wasn't, not really, because if she had forgiven him for all of the things he had done, to everyone, to the universe, to her, then this was the least he could do.

He wrapped her in a hug once again, and Rose finally relaxed in his arms, letting out a great long breath of relief. She buried her face in his chest and the Doctor was surprised to find himself blushing at the gesture even now. They stood entwined in the field, the cold wind fanning lazily about them.

After a moment, the Doctor stood back, held out his hand for Rose to take (which she did with a smile), and they started back toward the cottage together.

"Just one thing, though," Rose said hesitantly.

"What?"

"What was that weird bit you said about looms?"

The Doctor just laughed.


	6. Part 6

One day, the TARDIS was finished.

Rose said goodbye to her mum with a hug and a kissy on the cheek and Jackie pretended to harrumph about how unsafe the whole thing was, but couldn't quite suppress the slow and knowing smile that crept across her face. Rose shook hands with Pete, only to have him surprise her with a great hug in return. The Doctor blathered on about this and that and the other in an attempt to ward off any mushy goodbyes (he grumped something about "domesticity" with a wrinkled nose) but he (grudgingly) accepted it all the same when Jackie tutted and fretted over how thin he was, even now, and surely their first trip would take them to some strange alien planet where they'd have absolutely no trouble eating such a skinny bloke, no trouble at all, and wouldn't he at least like a few biscuits to take along? (He would.)

Then it was time to say goodbye to Tony.

Rose crouched low to the ground and squeezed him about his shoulders, hugging him close to her, much to his protests—for all that Tony seemed to know the truth, Rose was still, in most ways, his big sister, and therefore likely full of the worst kind of cooties. It probably didn't help when her tricky fingers snuck down to give him a tickle in his pudgy sides. Tony let out a shriek and then a giggle and tried to resume his pouty frown but found that he couldn't; the best he could do was laugh and kick his legs and say "Stop!" and look disappointed when Rose respected his request and did exactly as he asked. Then he laughed when she started the assault all over again.

The Doctor stayed back, leaning against the doors of the new TARDIS, and just watched with a small smile, remembering the events of two years ago.

* * *

><p>"<em>So…" he said, sitting next to Tony on his racecar bed.<em>

_The two of them sat in silence for a moment, Tony playing with a tattered and much-loved stuffed bunny, the Doctor twiddling his thumbs._

"_So, you know that Rose and I are your real parents, right? I mean, your biological parents," he blurted out, because he couldn't think of a better way to lead into things, even though he knew for a fact that Rose had just had this very conversation with Tony just the other day, right after a world-altering pronouncement and an argument in a cold, damp field._

"_I just wanted to let you know, things don't have to change, not unless you want them to," the Doctor said hurriedly. "We can work all this out. It's all a bit unconventional, to be certain, but I've had far stranger arrangements—"_

"_Are you going to tell me a story?" Tony asked._

_The Doctor blinked._

"_It's bedtime," Tony said, as if that explained things. "I want a story. Or a book."_

_The Doctor frowned. "Did you miss what I said, or are you just taking this all surprisingly well?"_

_Tony shrugged. "I already knew," he said._

"_Yes, but, aren't you at least a wee bit upset that—well, that you were lied to?" the Doctor asked. "About Rose being your sister, and all that?"_

_Tony shrugged again, and returned to his stuffed bunny. "I know Rose loves me," he said. "'Sides, it's just words."_

_The Doctor smiled. "You seem very certain," he said._

_But it made a sort of sense, the Doctor supposed; Tony didn't care much for words and titles and names. He was too young to really understand or appreciate their significance. Probably all he cared about was a warm home, warm food, plenty of toys, and people who loved him. A family, however strange and mismatched and cobbled-together it was._

_Something to be said for that, the Doctor thought._

_But when Tony set down his bunny and reached for the Doctor with both hands, arms outstretched for a hug, the Doctor froze._

* * *

><p>The Doctor had been a father, once. He was not sure how he felt about being a father again.<p>

It was all for the best, they'd decided. Tony should stay with Jackie and Pete. A life in the TARDIS was probably too dangerous for a child. And even if he did know the truth of his biological parentage, Jackie and Pete were his parents in every way that mattered.

After Rose finished her goodbyes with a kiss on Tony's nose (to which he responded with an exaggerated "Ewwwwwww" and a big grin), she gave Jackie one last hug. She practically skipped over to join the Doctor next to the TARDIS. He placed his hand on one door handle, and she took the other, and they both prepared to pull, to open the doors of this new TARDIS for the first time.

But Rose hesitated, her fingers stilling on the cold metal.

She glanced back at Tony, who watched them with a mixture of open delight and jealousy dancing across his chubby childish face. He'd heard so, so many stories about the TARDIS, about the adventures of the Time Lord and shop-girl-turned-defender-of-the-universe that traveled within. He had heard many a myth and legend about Slitheen, and bad wolves, and Daleks, of planets made of nothing but frozen oceans, of worlds destroyed and worlds rebuilt. He'd heard stories of the TARDIS like other children heard stories about Mother Goose or Little Red Riding Hood. He had heard, and believed.

And here was his own personal fairy tale, brought to life before him, but lingering just out of his reach.

Rose chanced a look up at the Doctor, to find him stalled as well, staring at the rough blue wooden exterior of the TARDIS, looking without seeing. He was thinking, too, and when his eyes met Rose's, she could tell he was thinking the same thing she was.

She just needed to hear him say it.

* * *

><p><em>The Doctor hesitated. Tony waited, arms still held out, face expectant.<em>

_A family, he thought to himself. How unexpected. How very strange. How…domestic._

_After a moment, the Doctor scooped Tony up in a hug._

* * *

><p>The Doctor swallowed. Rose grinned, her eyes shining, her tongue trapped between her teeth.<p>

"Well," the Doctor said, and he turned around to face Tony, his hand outstretched, "What are you waiting for?"


End file.
